


One Night In Metropolis

by shauds



Series: Comfortember2020 [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Blue Devil (DCU Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Comfortember, Eddie Bloomberg Needs A Hug, Gen, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Mute Jason Todd, first day/night, no editing we die like Jason and Eddie did, temporarily, the everyman project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27341200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shauds/pseuds/shauds
Summary: Some time after getting his throat slit open, Jason thinks he's spent enough time at the Metropolis hospital he's been hidden away in, and decides to make his escape.Meanwhile, also in Metropolis, Eddie's been rejected from the Everyman project and, with no other options, he finds himself spending the night curled up behind a church.They bump into eachother.
Relationships: Eddie Bloomberg & Jason Todd, Jason Todd and Talia al Ghul (mentioned)
Series: Comfortember2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993963
Comments: 4
Kudos: 96
Collections: Comfortember 2020





	One Night In Metropolis

Jason hated hospitals, the smell of decay washed over with antiseptics flavoured painfully artificial fruits and flowers that mixed together and made him sick to his stomach. He hated the doctors and nurses, paid off to make sure he didn't die - again - while still keeping his presence a secret, but they'd been paid too much and were trying way too hard for that expected bonus.

He hated how blindingly sterile and white this particular one was, how badly he wished he could run his grubby hands over everything and give himself **something** else to look at. Only his hands weren't even grubby, because everything just had to be so fucking clean, and he just had to be bored out of his fucking mind. Not a good place to be when the thoughts swimming around in there were... less than productive, more than terrifying, focused too much on why he was in this fucking hospital to begin with.

And since Talia didn't appreciate that he was already out of his fucking mind enough right now, thank you very much, and refused to allow her paid off doctors to discharge him, he wasn't going to let himself feel too bad about discharging himself out the window he worked open with an IV needle he swiped off the nurse who'd come to change it.

The fall hurt like the bitch his life was and he was going to be stuck with that limp for at least a week, but on top of everything else that hurt right then, who the hell cared? He was going to need to lay low for at least that long anyhow, and it wasn't like he was going to be running across rooftops putting the fear of the devil on scumbags when he couldn't even **talk**.

For now, Jason took deep breath of Metropolis's shiny, fart of Superman scented air, then set about pinpointing where in the city he was, so he could commence with the lay-lowing. The layout had changed some since Jason was a kid and he'd never been all that familiar with the place even then. His first, bare footed step got him a sliver of glass slipped in his foot, and he figured that some clothes that wouldn't immediately get him called in as an escaped mental patient should probably take precedence over that.

*******

It took not a full hour and Jason picked up the first hints of a tail. One would have thought that with the whole was for Daddy's big ole assassin empire Talia had going on with her sister, she wouldn't have the people to spare tracking down a useless operative who wasn't even an operative. It took him another five hours of something akin to a panicked run around the city on a busted ankle with reduced lung capacity and the ever present threat of Bruce's buddy Clark for Jason to lose that tale, and by then he had only the barest inkling of where he'd ended up. Somewhere near enough the outskirts for the smattering of trees to fall outside of the rest of the city's standard of neat, unobtrusive rows.

There was a church nearby, stained glass of the windows twinkling it the bright lights of the much larger building that surrounded it.

Jason would come to blame his deep, halting grunt of, "Sanctuary," on the linger effects of painkillers and exhaustion as he limped, slumped over himself on his bad ankle around the darkened back of the place like he was trying out for the part of Quasimodo in a badly produced school play. It took everything he had for that single utterance not to turn into a blood soaked coughing fit that would have alerted everything in the city to his presence and may well have resulted in him passing out and waking up back in that hospital. Or just died, again, either was equally likely, he couldn't have said which he preferred.

' _Fuck_ ,' he went down, clutching at his bandaged throat as his back hit the nearest wall, the force jolting his ankle and, funny enough, not even that was as bad as the pain spiking down his throat as if it were being slit all over again. Really fucking ironic how his usual pain relieving breathing techniques were the absolute last thing - barring any more stupid attempts at talking for dumb jokes and some good old pain relieving cursing - he should have been doing to push down the agony.

Goddamnit, when this was over he was going to put aside an entire day just for releasing all of the pent up screaming this fucking injury was forcing him to endure. If that would even be enough considering he already had close to a month's worth saved up and one word was still enough to reduce him to this.

"Um, are you, uh, okay?"

Fuck. Jason scooched away from the presence that emerged from the darkness of an alcove besides the one from which Jason had taken his shelter. He had the presence of mind not to use his injured ankle to do the scooching, so there was one win in the bag.

"Oh, sorry!" The exclamation of Jason's not-attacker was accompanied by a panicky waving of hands and some indecipherable, rambling apology that solidified the non-attacking nature of the kid delivering it. Just some kid, and judging by the still sleep dazed looked on his face, the backpack tangled in his legs, he was using this church for the same purpose as Jason.

Jason waved him off, with one hand and scrubbed the other over his own face, shit, he needed to sleep, he wasn't going to get far jumping at every baby faced, street kid who'd voice hadn't even finished breaking yet that crossed his path.

"Phew." The kid let out a sigh that carried even more relief than Jason felt, he squirmed further out of the alcove he'd nestled in, "You're sure though, right? I bet if I knocked on the door I could get a glass of water from the priest or something."

Jason shook his head, he wasn't drinking anything until he didn't have to worry about the potential complications it would bring keeping him in the city again. It was surprising, though, that this kid had offered. Generosity wasn't something carried around for long on the streets, especially not in cases when it was genuine. Jason squinted at the kid again, now there was some illumination revealing his companion.

Baby faced was right, the tiniest bit of peach fuzz on his cheeks that tried to hide a splatter of freckles made him look younger instead of adding on years, wide brown eyes that Jason suddenly knew would take on a hint of burning ochre in the sun. Fuck, Jason didn't even need to see the shade of the hair hiding under the kids green hoodie to know who was sitting next to him.

Instinctively, Jason's first act was to pull down his own stolen cap in an attempt to hide his own features. His first thought being that this was it, he was caught, soon would come the inevitable call to whatever Super - there were a whole slew of them flying about now - and Jason was caught. What a fucking nuisance. Chasing that though and speeding past it just a moment later, was that Eddie Bloomberg had been sleeping behind a church, in Metropolis, **by himself** and looked unkept enough that Jason had mistaken him for a street kid.

"I'm gonna try and get you some water." Eddie jumped up, seeing something on the visible parts of Jason's face for the worry to return to his voice.

Jason gripped Eddie's arm before he could reason that letting Eddie leave would give him a chance to slip away. He pulled down the collar of his sweater and motioned to his bandaged throat, then his mouth and again shook his head.

Eddie's face shifted in a wordless 'oh', and he settled back down, right next to Jason, where he **wasn't** supposed to be. Eddie was supposed to be in Hollywood, or somewhere else off traveling the world for movie shoots with his Aunt, in his basement tinkering with his suit, safe and warm in bed with horror movies playing in the background. Not sleeping behind a church, it was a mistake, or… something.

Jason almost asked, he had to know, to hear that this was some kind of mistake or misunderstanding, but he didn't even get as far as forming the first word and his throat shot him a warning pang.

"Is there…," Eddie cleared his own throat, then pressed a hand against it in obvious discomfort. "Is there anything else I can do to help."

Again, Jason shook his head, he didn't need any fucking help, he needed to figure out what was going on. Maybe Eddie had gotten lost, or there was a dare involved, Dan Cassidy had lived in Metropolis once, right?

He tried ASL ' _What are you doing_?'

But Eddie only shook his head incomprehensibly, a sad look in his eyes. "Sorry."

Jason waved off his apology again, bringing himself into the light, uncaring if it allowed Eddie to recognize him. He pointed at Eddie, then the church, mimed sleeping, then turned up his hands in a questioning shrug.

"You wanna know what I'm doing here?" Eddie looked a little confused, but Jason couldn't decide if it was him working on placing Jason, or working out Jason's attempts at communication.

Jason nodded.

"Just needed someplace out of the way to sleep, spent all my money getting to Metropolis, so I don't have enough to get back home or for a room somewhere. Is this where you sleep? I can go if you want, but I'm real tired, and I promise I'm not gonna try and mug you or anything. I came here to try and be a superhero - you heard of the Everyman project, right? So I wouldn't do something like that. Don't know how I could prove that, but…"

Lex Luthor, that piece of over boiled cat shit. Jason cut him off by resting a hand on his shoulder. He formed the universal sign of ' _okay_ ' with his other hand as he shook his head. Jason then pressed a hand to his own chest before opening and closing it to mime talking.

"Making conversation?" Eddie guessed.

Jason nodded.

Eddie chuckled, the sound tired now worry had filtered out of his posture and it faded into a long yawn as Eddie rubbed at his eye. "Sorry, I haven't slept in a while, 'm kinda jumpy."

' _Sorry_ ,' Jason mouthed the word back. He mimed sleeping again with another questioning shrug.

"I should." Eddie said, and he vanished back into his alcove with heavy thump, "I wasn't before though, so you don't have to worry you woke me or anything," he muttered something under his breath questioning whether Jason did care, "I've never done this before, and really this whole place is kinda creepy I keep thinking a gargoyle is gonna come down and eat me. And this place doesn't even **have** gargoyle, so y'know. But I had this friend once who said to find somewhere out of the way if you gotta spend a night on the streets, and this is the only out of the way place I could find, so…" There was some more shuffling on his end, "I'm here."

First time, Jason was relieved to be hearing that part at least. He settled down as best he could into his on alcove.

"It's nice to not be all alone out here if the guys in that graveyard decide to make a comeback. Wait…" Eddie head peeked over the wall separating them. "You wouldn't leave me for the hypothetical zombies, right?" His eyes were open wide in an exaggerated version of shock, his mouth gaping in a gasp.

Jason hand to stomp down on surprised laughter that would not have been good for his physical health right then. He contorted his face into as innocent of a 'who me' expression as it could get, a hand spread across his very injured heart.

Eddie chuckled, the sound, soft, but genuine, bringing a smile to Jason's face. It was so rare he heard such things, even rarer that they were because of something he'd done. In fact, he could count the times it had happened since his death on one hand, and half of those had come from Talia.

Jason gestured at Eddie and again, mimed sleeping, then pointed at himself, his eyes, and waved a hand around the area. He knew Eddie was paranoid when it came to strangers, but tired as he was, maybe he'd take this little Jason could give him.

"That's not fair, then when would you sleep?"

Jason tapped at his watchless wrist and waved him off. ' _Later_.' He tried to communicate. It would be fine, Jason hadn't been planning on sleeping that night either.

"I can watch later?" Eddie guessed, his brows knitting as he considered. "That friend I mentioned said teaming up like that does make this safer."

Jason nodded, let him believe that if it got him some rest. He had an idea of who this friend was had been.

"Yeah, we can do that," Eddie gave one sharp nod, "You sure you wanna go first though?"

Jason opened his eyes wide and blinked the sting away. ' _Wide awake_.'

"Okay," Eddie yawned, "g'night then, uh.. oh, I'm Eddie, but uh, I dunno what to call you." He squinted at Jason. "And you can't tell me," he sighed, "shoot."

Jason smiled and waved the question off.

"Well, night then, church guy." And he was gone again.

Jason snorted and folded his arms behind his head, tipping back to watch the sky. Eddie didn't go quiet right away. Soon he piped up about how this was similar to some or other movie he then rambled on about for a good few minutes. Then he talked about the city, the projects he'd been rejected from - thank god - it was a good things Jason couldn't voice those thoughts right at his moment. Eventually the melody of Eddie's words lost coherence, became more fragmented and slurred as time went on, then it died down all together leaving only crickets and the not so distant murmur of traffic intermingled with his soft snores to fill the air.

And Jason watched, he knew the kinds of things that came in the night, knew there were a million more than he knew of to be afraid of. It was still more peaceful than the hospital, and when his thoughts drifted in the little room he gave them during his vigil, they didn't stray towards Gotham. There was something new to worry about, something it took nothing to convince his mind was worth more than his previous, far pettier worryings.

It could have been hours or minutes when he first noticed the figure, something that may well have been made of shadows cast aside by those trees that had first caught his attention. Jason moved from his reclined position, ready to spring into action should the thing make a move towards them. It didn't even cross his mind that it might have been there for him, not something this dark and otherworldly. Something like this, he'd feel it's attention immediately. Maybe for the boy sleeping soundly to his left?

Jason watched, while time trickled by and the moon moved across the sky for the thing to come forward, a challenge he knew he couldn't fulfill in his gaze. But it didn't come forward, whatever it wanted, it wanted it without even the fight Jason would put up, and with Jason's refusal to move away, it came no closer. An exhaustion induced hallucination, Jason surmised, not at all unfamiliar with the phenomena.

The sky grew lighter, whatever stars the city allowed to shine through fading away with the rising sun, and the second that sun touched the creature it may well have never been there at all. Jason's eyes never drifted from that spot.

Only when the sun had long since finished waking up, when it was shining high in the sky did Jason hear the mutterings and squirmings of Eddie following his example. There was a gasp and some more concentrated squirmings when Eddie remembered where he was.

"Hey!" Eddie appeared in Jason's field of vision, his yell still half slurred with sleep, "You were supposed to wake me up halfway!"

*******

Eddie new friend tried his over the top innocence act again, but it wasn't half as convincing as it had been last time, and last time it hadn't been as convincing at all. What it was, was very familiar, and now, in the light of day, even more so than it had been only the vague, shadowed plains Eddie had had to go off of last night. Too, familiar, Eddie swallowed and tried not to look too much like he was seeing a ghost. He really hoped it wasn't a ghost.

When it became clear that Eddie wasn't going to buy it, the other boy just shrugged and waved Eddie off, tapping on an imaginary watch and motioning somewhere vaguely ahead of them. ' _Next time_.'

Eddie wants to say there isn't likely to be a next time, then he remembers that yesterday's problems haven't vanished overnight. He wasn't in any better of a position to either get back to California **or** find less outdoorsy lodgings.

Eddie ran a hand though his hair knocking back his hood in the process, hot damn, had he screwed up this time.

He was drawn out of his thoughts by fingers snapping directly in front of his face, his sort of bunk-mate's concerned frown coming into focus. ' _Okay_?' He waved the sign at Eddie.

"Sorry." Eddie blinked, feeling red creep up his neck an embarrassed grin slipping into place , "Guess I spaced out."

The frown didn't vanish, but it did turn less severe. He pointed at Eddie and mimed driving, cocking his head curiously.

"Can I drive?" Eddie repeated what he thought was the question back and got a nod in answer, "well yeah, I got a license." Eddie shrugged.

The guy nodded, motioned at himself, and this time, when he mimed driving, he shook his head and then slipped a bottle of pills out of his pocket. Eddie almost refused to accept it, worried for a moment that he was being offered drugs or something, but he remembered the the sterile bandaging he'd gotten a peek at the night before. A quick scan of the bottle proved it's contents to be antibiotics, drowsiness listed as one of the side effects.

"You can't drive, because of your meds?"

Another nod, and the mute moved a hand between the two of them then clasped both of his together, before jabbing a thumb away from the city. Team up an leave together.

"Where are you going?" Eddie asked, knowing already that he'd agree, at this point he'd try anywhere that wasn't Bludhaven. At least this guy hadn't tried to kill him in his sleep, and even if it was just that he **looked** familiar, Eddie would like not being all alone on top of everything else.

The guy opened his mouth to speak, but caught himself before a sound could escape, he poked at his cheek with his thumb as he thought. Oh right, he couldn't say.

That got him a relieved smile, and Eddie got to feel some relief of his own when Hollywood was pointed out to him on the brightly colored map printed on the back. "That's great, I needed to go there too."

Another smile, and some motions Eddie put together as ' _Wait here_ ', before he hurriedly jogged off, **probably** too fast for that limp of his, leaving Eddie, again, alone at the back of the church. Wait Eddie did, what else did he have to do? It didn't take long enough that his doubts could overtake him, maybe coming on half an hour, and loud hooting beckoned Eddie around to the road.

It wasn't anything fancy, just a run of the mill green SUV pulled up to the curb, it's driver waving Eddie over, it was the best thing Eddie had seen since reaching the city.

"Sweet." Eddie grinned, accepting the wheel when it was offered, tossing his pack to the bag seat as it's previous driver shifter over to the passengers seat. He stopped just short of starting it up again. "How come you didn't just sleep in your car last night?"

Eddie's passenger was digging through the cubbyhole and soon freed a pen out from the mess inside it, he raised the instrument triumphantly, then scribbled on the brochure Eddie had given him.

' _And hijacked? No thanks. Now you can watch._ ' The writing was also… but it couldn't be, that was too…

"Oh." Eddie shrugged the harsh battering of his nostalgia off before it could overtake him, he would have thought the car would be safer, but he wouldn't have exactly called himself an expert in all of this. "Hey, before you go to sleep," and he did look like he was going to conk out at any second now, "you got a something I can called you now?" Maybe that would help, to have something else to think of his new road trip buddy as.

The writing was sluggish now, done in the midst of a deep, eye watering yawn, then both pen and paper thrust at Eddie as the other boy pushed his seat back and got ready to catch up on his missed night of sleep.

Getting the name didn't help, now written in neat, long achingly familiar letters, ' _Jason_ ' stared back at Eddie from the crumpled page.

"Jason?" Eddie read it aloud.

Next to him, the boy nodded, already halfway asleep. He didn't vanish, didn't leap up and point out a hidden camera in the back of the car. Within a minute, he was sleeping sound besides Eddie as Eddie himself had besides him last night.

Jason…

"Okay." Eddie breathed, then quietly, and with a calm he most certainly wasn't the emotion he was feeling deep in his chest, Eddie turned the key in the ignition, and gently eased the car away from the curb.

He wasn't going to question it, not now. Maybe later, when he could talk, and when Jason could answer him. Eddie swallowed and looked again at the bandages wrapped around Jason's neck as if he was seeing them for the fist time. If Jason could answer him.

For now, he was just going to drive, and watch over his sleeping friend so he could get some rest too.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, Jason totally just ran off like crazy to hack an ATM and buy the very first used car he came across near the end there.


End file.
